Accounting is a very old discipline. Several centuries

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1 José M.Merigó, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester and Department of Management Control and Information Systems, University of Chile Jian-Bo Yang, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester Bibliometrics is a fundamental field of information science that studies bibliographic material quantitatively. It is very useful for organising available knowledge within a specific scientific discipline. This study presents a bibliometric overview of accounting research using the Web of Science database, identifying the most relevant research in the field classified by papers, authors, journals, institutions and countries. The results show that the most influential journals are: The Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, The Accounting Review and Accounting, Organizations and Society. It also shows that US institutions are the most influential worldwide. However, it is important to note that some very good research in this area, including a small number of papers and citations, may not show up in this study due to the specific characteristics of different subtopics. Accounting is a very old discipline. Several centuries ago, merchants were already using accounting techniques in their businesses. While the first use of accounting is generally attributed to Pacioli in Northern Italy in the 14 th century, it actually emerged in Arabia and was later brought to Venice by Arabian traders. Accounting grew to much greater prominence in the 20 th centuryasitwaswidelyadoptedbymultinational enterprises requiring careful analysis of their business information. Today, it is the main tool for representing business information, with many professional associations around the world dedicated to it. It can be divided into many sub-disciplines, including financial accounting, auditing and management accounting. An important consolidation process took place in 1916 when the American Association of University Instructors in Accounting was created. Later, in 1936 it changed to its current name, known worldwide, the American Accounting Association (AAA). The AAA is a voluntary association dedicated to the promotion and development of accounting education and research. It comprises several thousand professionals and academic accountants. Over the last few decades, many other associations have been created around the world. Some focus on the professional sector, others on the academic community. The expansion of accounting research over the last century has reached maturity with the creation of general associations such as the European Accounting Association in 1977 and others in Asia, including the Asian Academic Accounting Association in 1998 and the Asia Pacific Management Accounting Association in Moreover, many countries also have their own accounting associations, usually linked to international ones, such as the British Accounting Association. Accounting research has been disseminated through many information channels, in particular, scholarly journals. The AAA played a fundamental role during the first half of the 20 th century with the creation of The Accounting Review (TAR) in For many years, it was the main outlet for accounting researchers to publish new knowledge about the field. Many other journals were available in the literature but with less impact on the academic community. Later, in 1963, the Journal of Accounting Research (JAR) was created by the University of Chicago, Accounting and Finance (AF) in 1961 and Abacus (ABA) in Some others appeared in the following decades including Accounting and Business Research (ABR) in 1971, Journal of Business Finance & Accounting (JBFA) (1974), Accounting, Organizations and Society (AOS) (1976), Journal of Accounting & Economics (JAE) (1979) and Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory in Thus, the academic community began to find many alternatives for publishing research. More recently, many other journals have appeared including the Journal of Accounting and Public Policy (JAPP), ContemporaryAccountingResearch (CAR), European Accounting Review (EAR) and Review of Accounting Studies (RAS). Correspondence: José M. Merigó, Department of Management Control and Information Systems, University of Chile, Av. Diagonal Paraguay 257, Santiago, Chile. Tel: +56 (2) ; jmerigo@fen.uchile.cl Australian Accounting Review No. 80 Vol. 27 Issue doi: /auar

2 Over the years, many authors have provided a wide range of overviews concerning the field of accounting. Some of them used bibliometric indicators to assess the general state of the field (Brown and Gardner 1985a; Brown 1996). Many others have also studied different fundamental aspects including journal rankings (Bonner et al. 2006; Chan et al. 2009) and regional analysis (Chan et al. 2012b; Qu et al. 2009). Moreover, several papers have developed a cross-disciplinary analysis comparing accounting with other related disciplines, including marketing and finance (Bernardi et al. 2008; Swanson 2004). However, none of them have provided a complete picture of the current state of the art, considering all the modern tools available for representing a field with bibliometric indicators (Hirsch 2005; Podsakoff et al. 2008). The aim of this paper is to present a general bibliometric analysis of accounting research. This will provide a complete overview of the main results and trends in the field. The information is collected from the Web of Science (WoS) database, usually regarded as the most influential database in academic research because it only includes those journals recognised to have the highest standards. Most of the results are in accordance with our common knowledge where JAE, JAR, TAR and AOS are the most influential journals and North American authors and institutions are the main leaders of the discipline. This paper s new approach is that it combines several tools for representing the importance of the bibliographic material found in WoS. Thus, it assesses the information from different perspectives. This is important because some authors, journals or institutions may have a high result according to one set of measures but a different result under another. Basically, the focus is on citation analysis, number of publications and the h-index (Hirsch 2005), which is a modern measure for representing the quality of a set of papers. Note that it is assumed from a general context that the number of papers indicates productivity while the number of citations indicates influence in a research area. The h-index is a combination of both of these. This study analyses the 300 most influential papers in accounting research of all time. The ranking is classified by journals so all the papers from the same journal appear together. The main reason for this is that it is easier to see the influence of a journal and the type of papers published there that become more relevant. The paper also presents a list of the most influential authors in accounting. In order to focus on only the highest quality, the ranking is established considering the number of citations in the top four journals (JAE, JAR, TAR and AOS). In order to be more general in the evaluation of these authors, many other factors are considered, among them the number of papers published and the h-index. Moreover, all the publications, citations and h-index obtained are also taken into account when considering all 20 accounting journals currently indexed in the WoS. J.M. Merigó & J.-B. Yang The focus is then placed on the most influential institutions. They are assessed with similar criteria to those used for assessing authors. It is found that almost all of the top 100 institutions are from English-speaking countries. Finally, the study ends with a country analysis of the most productive and influential research in accounting. Literature Review Bibliometric analysis studies and classifies bibliographic material quantitatively. In recent years it has become very popular to assess the state of the art of a scientific discipline, chiefly motivated by the development of computers and the Internet. In the literature, there are many discussions regarding the definition of bibliometric analysis. Broadus (1987) provided a definition that considered its use in the 1980s and left the concept open for further development by adding... and surrogates of either. More recently, Bar-Ilan (2008) provided a complete overview of the concept from the general perspective of informetrics. The main advantage of bibliometrics is that it provides a general picture of a research area, which is very useful in identifying the most influential research and identifying the main trends over time. Bibliometric studies have been developed in many disciplines, such as the paper by Podsakoff et al. (2008) in management. The authors developed a method that permitted the identification of the most influential authors and institutions in 30 selected management journals from 1981 to 2004, using citation analysis and number of publications. Moreover, they analysed the results in five-year periods in order to see its evolution over time. Similar studies in management developed by other authors are available, including Gómez-Mejia and Balkin (1992), Kirkpatrick and Locke (1992) and Trieschmann et al. (2000). Wagstaff and Culyer (2012) developed a modern bibliometric analysis in health economics that provided a complete picture of the field over 40 years. They considered many fundamental issues, including a list of the 300 most cited papers and the most influential authors and institutions ranked according to the h-index. This study showed that modern bibliometric techniques can provide a lot of information regarding a research discipline. A previous paper had already addressed these issues (Rubin and Chang, 2003) although their results were less ambitious and general. Econometrics is another field that has attracted attention from bibliometric researchers. Among others, the papers by Baltagi (1998, 2007) are worth mentioning. He studied the most productive authors, institutions and countries in econometrics taking into account the most influential journals in the area. Observe that his 2007 paper was an update of the previous research published in 1998 but of great interest because it provided 72 Australian Accounting Review C 2016 CPA Australia

3 J.M. Merigó & J.-B. Yang a broader picture of the field. A similar study was undertaken by Hall (1990) but his analysis was restricted to studies developed in the 1980s. Some other papers worth mentioning in this area are Cribari-Neto et al. (1999) and Phillips et al. (1988). More generally, economics has received a lot of attention for its development of bibliometric analysis in a wide range of perspectives. For example, Laband and Piette (1994) studied the influence of economic journals for the period The results found were consistent with common knowledge the most influential journals included the American Economic Review, Econometrica and the Journal of Political Economy. Recently, several similar studies have been developed (Card and DellaVigna 2013; Laband 2013; Stern 2013). Some other studies have analysed the influence of authors and institutions (Autor 2012; Kocher and Sutter 2001; Süssmuth et al. 2006). Other researchers have developed a regional approach, the European region in particular (Coupé 2003; Lubrano et al. 2003). This is due to the fact that there is very relevant research in the region that rarely appears in the higher positions as these are usually occupied by journals from the US. Some other specific regions that have received attention are China (Du and Teixeira 2012), Germany (Sternberg and Litzenberger 2005), Spain (Rodríguez 2006) and Canada (Davies et al. 2008). Entrepreneurship has also been of interest in bibliometrics. Ratnatunga and Romano (1997) studied the most influential research in contemporary small enterprise research. Dos Santos et al. (2011) studied the influence of journals in this field in the scientific community. Recently, Landström et al. (2012) have provided a complete bibliometric overview of the discipline. Some other authors have developed similar studies but with a more specific focus on family business research (Benavides- Velasco et al. 2013; Casillas and Acedo 2007). Production and operations management has been studied in several bibliometric papers. Hsieh and Chang (2009) provided a general state of the art of the discipline considering the most productive and influential authors, institutions and countries. Pilkington and Meredith (2009) analysed the most influential papers by using a citation analysis approach. Some other papers have presented several journal rankings in the field, including Barman et al. (2001), Holsapple and Lee-Post (2010), Petersen et al. (2011), Stonebraker et al. (2012) and Theoharakis et al. (2007). Many discussions have focused on determining the significance of production and operations management as an independent research field (Linderman and Chandrasekaran 2010; Pilkington and Liston-Hayes 1999). Several studies have also focused on marketing. Seggie and Griffith (2009) studied the importance of publishing in top journals in order to gain academic promotion. Baumgartner and Pieters (2003) analysed the influence Accounting Research: A Bibliometric Analysis of marketing journals by using a citation analysis approach. Tellis et al. (1999) compared the publications found in the major journals in order to establish a ranking between them. Other authors have drawn attention to the influence of marketing scholars, institutions and countries (Chan et al. 2012a; Stremersch and Verhoef 2005). Specific topics of marketing have also been considered by many papers, including advertising research (Kim and McMillan 2008), public policy (Sprott and Miyazaki 2002) and pricing research (Leone et al. 2012). Bibliometric studies are also present in financial research. Alexander and Mabry (1994) presented some rankings regarding the most influential authors and institutions in finance. Borokhovich et al. (1995) analysed the most influential institutions in finance while Kim et al. (2009) considered the competitive advantage of the top institutions and the trends for the future. Some other papers have focused on the quality and influence of financial journals (Borokhovich et al. 2000; Currie and Pandher 2011; Olheten et al. 2005). Focusing on accounting research, several authors have provided a wide range of overviews over the years by using bibliometric indicators to assess the general state of the art. For example, Brown and Gardner (1985) and Brown (1996) analysed the most influential articles, authors and institutions by using a citation analysis. As expected, they found that US authors and institutions were the most influential. Coyne et al. (2010), Chakraborty et al. (2014) and Pickerd et al. (2011) developed several rankings classifying accounting by topics and methodology. Other studies were also developed to analyse a specific journal by citation count, including the work of Brown and Gardner (1985b) focused on CAR, Brown et al. (1987) on AOS and Smith and Krogstad (1984) on AUD. Some other authors analysed the information by publication count such as the paper by Heck and Bremser (1986) focusing on TAR and Watts (1998) on JAE. Other papers have analysed the quality of accounting journals in order to establish a ranking that permits the classification of journals from very high quality to lower quality (Bonner et al. 2006, 2012). Under this framework, Lowe and Locke (2005) developed a survey of British accounting academics in order to establish the quality of the journals. Chan et al. (2009) developed a similar approach by using a dissertation citation analysis and by using an author affiliation index that indicates the percentage of publications in the journal from authors affiliated to institutions in the top 100 (Chan et al. 2012b). Another interesting issue is the regional classification of accounting research. Qu et al. (2009) studied the North American region to analyse the influence of US elites in disseminating Canadian accounting research. Chan et al. (2012b) provided an overview of research in accounting and finance in Australia and New Zealand during Some other research has been more C 2016 CPA Australia Australian Accounting Review 73

4 specific, analysing a particular feature including author analysis (Danielson and Heck 2010), institutions (Reinstein and Calderon 2006) and journals (Jones and Roberts 2005). Moreover, accounting research has also been compared with other related disciplines including marketing, finance and management (Bernardi et al. 2008; Swanson 2004). Methodology This paper analyses information through a combination process that considers total number of papers, total citations and the h-index. The main reason for doing so is that there is no fixed methodology for establishing the value of a set of papers that may include authors, institutions or countries. Therefore, in order to develop a complete analysis it is necessary to consider the main factors that influence the results. In this paper, it is assumed that the three most practical factors that determine the value of a group of papers are the number of works published, citations and the h-index (Merigó et al. 2015). Much criticism and discussion is found in the literature regarding the search of an optimal approach for classifying the value of research (Podsakoff et al. 2008). Traditionally, the publication count has received much attention because it can be considered a measure that determines the productivity of an author, institution or country (Borokhovich et al. 1995). However, many limitations have been found due to the specific nature of each paper as some may have a higher number of pages, others a different number of authors or the size of one page in one journal is not equivalent to another. Furthermore, the type of paper may also influence the impact since literature reviews usually receive more citations than regular papers. Some studies have partially considered these issues and some solutions have been found; including adjusting for the number of papers by dividing each paper by the number of authors (Heck and Bremser 1986) and adjusting for the number of pages by considering the number of pages in each article (Baltagi 2007). However, several other limitations appeared because sometimes it is not easy to compare the publications of two different journals. For example, one paper in a top journal has a higher value than a paper in a medium quality journal. Therefore, if one author publishes five papers in a top journal, the value is higher than another one that publishes five papers in a medium quality journal. Unfortunately, it is not easy to classify this issue because, generally, one unit is given to each publication and citation. A possible solution for this problem is that each journal has a different counting process depending on a pre-established value using, for example, the impact factor provided by WoS. Thus, if a journal has an impact factor of 3, each paper published there should be considered as 3 units while J.M. Merigó & J.-B. Yang a journal with an impact factor of 1 should only be given 1 unit. Therefore, publishing one paper in the first top journal would be equivalent to publishing three papers in the medium journal. Although this could be a solution for overcoming the limitations mentioned before, there would still be problems in the evaluation process as it is also difficult to establish the value of a journal. The impact factor provided by the WoK is commonly accepted as a relevant indicator that could be used in publications and citation counts, but this calculation process is widely criticised. Currently, it considers the citations given by papers published in year n to papers published in years n 1andn 2. From this, it makes the ratio citations in year n 1andn 2 divided by the number of papers published in year n 1andn 2.However,dueto criticism received, especially because it seems very easy to manipulate the impact factor of a journal by using a self-citation policy and related techniques, it is now becoming more relevant to use a five-year impact factor. That is, instead of considering the last two years, citations over the last five years are considered. Although it is still possible to manipulate the impact factor under this framework, at least it is possible to reduce this limitation by more than 50%. As seen in many fields, the five-year impact factor seems to provide a more accurate result. Similar limitations are also found in the citation count. However, in this case the disequilibrium found at high levels seems to be lower because the number of citations is higher than the number of publications and the most popular papers tend to be the most cited ones. Usually, the number of citations is used as a measure for identifying the influence of a paper, author, institution or country. Although the limitations are less relevant in this case, it is still necessary to consider them. Moreover, other types of limitations may occur in this context. A very common one is that some topics may receive more citations than others because more journals are involved in this field or because of the interdisciplinary nature of a field that may involve more researchers. Therefore, some very good but rather specific research may receive fewer citations. The h-index (Hirsch 2005) is a modern technique that aims to combine publications and citations under the same framework. Thus, if a set of papers has an h-index of 30, it means that at least 30 papers have each received 30 citations or more. This measure combines the number of papers with citations, which seems to be very useful. However, for some particular cases it may not correctly represent the information. For example, if a researcher has published 100 papers with three of them having more than 1000 citations but the rest having fewer than four citations, the h-index will be three. However, it is clear that the value of this researcher is much higher. In order to solve this problem, other indexes have been suggested such as the g-index and the hg-index (Alonso et al. 2009; Egghe 2006). Most of these techniques are focused on 74 Australian Accounting Review C 2016 CPA Australia

5 J.M. Merigó & J.-B. Yang more specific issues that may affect some exceptional researchers but from a general perspective, the h-index seems to be an adequate measure for representing the value of a researcher considering both publications and citations at the same time. Regarding the selection of database, in this paper WoS, currently owned by Thomson & Reuters, is used. WoS includes papers published in almost all the known scientific disciplines and covers more than journals and papers. The research published there is classified into 251 subject categories and 151 more general research areas. It is assumed that WoS includes only those journals that are recognised as high quality by several criteria including: on time review and publication of papers, a rigorous peer review process and a wide dissemination through the Internet and related channels. Some other popular databases commonly used are SCOPUS, GoogleScholar and EconLit. However, for the purposes of this paper, only WoS will be used since it provides objective results that can be considered sufficiently neutral and representative of the information. Focusing on authorship and institutions, one unit is given to each author or institution contributing to the paper. Although this could be seen as a limitation, it is assumed that this will not substantially affect the results of the paper. The main reasons are as follows. For authorship, this research aims to identify both productivity and influence. Therefore, with the publication count we aim to detect those authors who publish the highest number of papers independently, whether these papers are single authored or not. Thus, the results will show the involvement of researchers in the publication of papers. Although sometimes this is unfair because this may not strictly reflect the productivity of one author, it gives a general view of his or her total production that usually includes single authored papers, those co-authored with junior researchers and collaborations with other senior researchers. Similar problems occur with the total number of citations and the h-index, although in this case the differences are less relevant because the involvement of a researcher is closer to the influence than the productivity. Concerning institutions, these limitations are less significant because here the concept of involvement becomes more relevant. The main reason is that a productive and influential institution is found by not only the publications of its own researchers but also the collaboration with researchers from other institutions. Several explanations are available for this. First, an institution is a dynamic entity made up of many researchers that may enter and leave at any time because the career of a researcher has several stages and each of them may be developed at a different place. Second, external researchers collaborating with people from the institution may also be partly considered as its members due to the exchange of knowledge between researchers. Note that a similar situation occurs when analysing the productivity Accounting Research: A Bibliometric Analysis and influence of a country where it is acceptable to give one unit to each country involved in one paper. Currently, WoS does not include a specific section for accounting. It has a subject category of business finance that mainly includes financial and accounting journals. Honing in on this category, 20 journals are found to be mainly dedicated to different topics of accounting. Note that there are journals that were previously included in the database such as the Journal of Accountancy. Since this journal has a more professional orientation and its current issues are not included in WoS, it has not been considered in the analysis. Moreover, some other journals with close connection to accounting have also been excluded in order to specify the area of accounting as much as possible. This issue has affected some journals that are sometimes considered to be accounting journals (Bonner et al. 2006; Chan et al. 2009) including the National Tax Journal and the Journal of American Taxation Association. Table 1 presents the 20 journals included in the analysis. In order to evaluate each journal, several variables are studied in order to rank them based on their value and significance. JAE, JAR, TAR and AOS are clearly the most influential journals in the field as assessed by all the different variables considered in this study. A next group of influential journals is AUD, CAR and RAS. The rest of the journals, ranked with the h-index, seem to obtain a position more or less in accordance with their influence. Note that in this ranking no significant anomalies are found because more than half of the journals have been included in WoS during the last six years. Therefore, they donothavemanypaperscollectedinwosatthistime.in order to consider the most influential papers published in these journals, three columns focusing on the number of papers with more than 200, 100 and 50 citations are considered. Since many journals have been included in WoSforfewerthan10yearsbutaremucholder,amanual search using the option cited reference search has been developed in order to find any highly cited paper in the journal above the 50 citation threshold. As shown in Table 1, JAE, JAR, TAR and AOS have published most of the highly cited papers. It is worth noting that JAE obtains higher results than the other three although it is the youngest journal. A key reason for this is that it has strong connections with economics. Therefore, it has broader influence because many researchers from economics may also consider this journal an outlet for their research. Another interesting issue is that TAR is much older than the other three and this is the reason why it has published the highest number of papers. However, this issue should not be taken into account when evaluating the ratio of citations/papers because old papers did not receive many citations due to the fact that there were not many journals at that time and the number of papers and citations in accounting was very low. C 2016 CPA Australia Australian Accounting Review 75

6 J.M. Merigó & J.-B. Yang Table 1 Most influential accounting research journals according to the WoS R Name H TC TP >200 >100 >50 Y Vol. IF 5-IF T300 1 JAE JAR TAR AOS AUD CAR RAS JBFA JAPP EAR ABA MAR AF ABR AH AAR AAAJ JIFMA APJAE SJFA Note that four other accounting journals have entered WoS during the last three years although they still have not received an impact factor: British Accounting Review; Comptabilité Control Audit; Critical Perspectives on Accounting; International Journal of Accounting Information Systems. JAPP was included in 2008 but it also appeared between 1982 and 1995 (Vols 1 14). Abbreviations: R = Rank; H = h-index; TC and TP = Total citations and papers; >200, >100, >50 = number of papers with more than 200, 100 and 50 citations; Y = Year when the journal was included in WoS; Vol. = First volume included in the WoS; IF = Impact Factor 2012; 5-IF = five-year Impact Factor 2012; T300 = Number of papers in the Top 300 list shown in Table 4; JAE = Journal of Accounting and Economics; JAR= Journal of Accounting Research; TAR= The Accounting Review; AOS= Accounting, Organizations and Society; AUD = Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory; CAR = Contemporary Accounting Research; RAS= Review of Accounting Studies; JBFA = Journal of Business Finance & Accounting; JAPP = Journal of Accounting and Public Policy; EAR = European Accounting Review; ABA = Abacus: A Journal of Accounting and Business Studies; MAR= Management Accounting Research; AF= Accounting and Finance; ABR = Accounting and Business Research; AH = Accounting Horizons; AAR = Australian Accounting Review; AAAJ = Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal; JIFMA= Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting; APJAE= Asia-Pacific Journal of Accounting & Economics; SFJA= Revista Española de Financiación y Contabilidad Spanish Journal of Finance and Accounting. As at February 2013, there were papers published in the 20 accounting journals listed in WoS. However, in order to exclude short communications, editorial material and book reviews, the analysis is mainly focused on full articles and reviews. Considering only these two types of publications, the number of papers is reduced to Furthermore, since it has been defined that four journals clearly dominate this discipline, most of the different analyses developed in the paper take as a point of departure the results found only in these top four journals. The main reason for doing this is to focus on papers with the highest quality. Accounting is a research field that currently does not have a significant position in WoS as only 20 journals are included. Before 2004 only eight journals were included. This is a very small number for such a large discipline; accounting comprises many thousands of researchers worldwide. Figure 1 shows the number of papers published in accounting during the last 50 years. As shown in Figure 1, the number was as low as around 100 per year until the last decade when it started to grow quickly. Currently the number is close to 700 papers per year and this seems likely to increase in the future. Note that the main reason for this is the expansion of WoS during the last few years, through which it has included many more journals. Moreover, regional expansion has also given non-english speaking countries the opportunity to have more journals included in the database. The number of citations received in this area is also very low compared to related disciplines such as finance and economics, mainly because of the low number of accounting journals that have been included in the database. In Table 2 the citation structure is presented in this area for the papers considered. Note that some additional adjustments made in order to find the most cited papers are also included here. Thus, the total number of papers is increased to The number of citations is very low compared to other disciplines where several papers receive more than 1000 citations. Furthermore, it is clear that most of the papers currently receive fewer than 50 citations. However, it is worth mentioning that in the future these numbers are expected to increase significantly due to the increase in the number of accounting journals included in WoS. 76 Australian Accounting Review C 2016 CPA Australia

7 J.M. Merigó & J.-B. Yang Accounting Research: A Bibliometric Analysis Figure 1 Number of annual publications in accounting in WoS (articles and reviews) since 1963 Table 2 General citation structure in accounting research in WoS All time Number of Number of Citations papers % Papers papers % Papers 500 citations citations citations citations citations Total impact factor is lower than it should be. However, the increase in journals has also influenced an increase in the impact factor. Due to this, the variations have been compensated for so that the final result is stable. Results This section presents the main results found in WoS concerning the most cited papers in accounting research, the most prolific authors, institutions and countries. Observe that the global h-index in accounting is 131. That is, from the total of papers, 131 have received at least 131 citations. Next, we look into the global impact factor in this field as shown in Table 3. Recall that it considers all the citations of papers published in accounting in year n to papers published in years n 1andn 2. From this it calculates the ratio citations in these two years divided by the number of papers in the same period. During the last 10 years, the global impact factor has been quite stable; between 1 and 1.5. The main reason for this is the selection process for WoS. Before, there were not many journals indexed, allowing the top journals to have a higher influence in the impact factor. Now, with more journals in WoS their influence is lower so the The most influential articles in accounting research of all time Over the last few decades, many influential papers have been published in accounting research. In order to identify them, this section analyses the most cited papers in accounting journals. Since many journals have only been included in WoS since last decade, a manual search process has also been developed. Thus, all the papers that could be considered mainstream accounting are considered. Table 4 presents a list with the 300 most cited papers in accounting of all time. Observe that the ranking has been developed by grouping all the papers from the same journal in order to find them directly in the list. The appearance of journals in the ranking is presented from the Table 3 Global impact factor in accounting research TP TC TC TP IF Abbreviations: TP = Total number of papers published in year n; TC = Total number of citations received from papers published in year n; TC2 = Total citations received in year n 1andn 2 from year n; TP2 = Total number of papers published in year n 1andn 2;IF= Impact factor of year n. C 2016 CPA Australia Australian Accounting Review 77

8 J.M. Merigó & J.-B. Yang Table most cited papers in accounting research J R TC Title Author/s Year C/Y JAE The effects of bonus schemes on accounting decisions PM Healy JAE Complementarities and fit: Strategy, structure and organizational P Milgrom, J Roberts change in manufacturing JAE Corporate performance and managerial remuneration KJ Murphy JAE Earnings management to avoid earnings decreases and losses D Burgstahler, I Dichev JAE Information asymmetry, corporate disclosure and the capital PM Healy, KG Palepu markets JAE The effect of international institutional factors on properties of R Ball, SP Kothari, A Robin accounting earnings JAE The economic implications of corporate financing reporting JR Graham, CR Harvey, S Rajgopal JAE The conservatism principle and the asymmetric timeliness of S Basu earnings JAE Auditor size and audit quality L De Angelo JAE Audit committee, board of director characteristics and earnings A Klein management JAE The information content of losses C Hayn JAE Performance matched discretionary accrual measures SP Kothari, AJ Leone, CE Wasley JAE Evidence that stock prices do not fully reflect the implications of VL Bernard, JK Thomas current earnings for future earnings JAE Executive compensation, management turnover and firm AT Coughlan, RM Schmidt performance JAE Discretionary disclosure RE Verrecchia JAE Debt covenant violation and manipulation of accruals ML Defond, J Jiambalvo JAE Accounting earnings and cash flows as measures of firm PM Dechow performance JAE Capital markets research in accounting SP Kothari JAE Predicting takeover targets KG Palepu JAE An analysis of intertemporal and cross sectional determinants of DW Collins, SP Kothari earnings response coefficients JAE The capitalization, amortization and value relevance of R&D B Lev, T Sougiannis JAE Additional evidence on the association between investment JJ Gaver, KM Gaver opportunity set and corporate financing, dividend and compensation policies JAE The market pricing of accruals quality J Francis, R LaFond, P Olsson, et al JAE Essays on disclosure RE Verrecchia JAE Stock options for undiversified executives BJ Hall, KJ Murphy JAE The use of equity grants to manage optimal equity incentive levels J Core, W Guay JAE Financial accounting information and corporate governance RM Bushman, AJ Smith JAE Underwriting relationships, analysts earnings forecast and HW Lin, MF McNichols investment recommendations 78 Australian Accounting Review C 2016 CPA Australia

9 J.M. Merigó & J.-B. Yang Accounting Research: A Bibliometric Analysis Table 4 Continued J R TC Title Author/s Year C/Y JAE Earnings quality in UK private firms R Ball, L Shivakumar JAE Incentives versus standards R Ball, A Robin, JS Wu JAE The relevance of the value-relevance literature for financial accounting RW Holthausen, RL Watts standard setting JAE Auditor brand name reputations and industry specializations AT Craswell, JR Francis, SL Taylor JAE Market liquidity and volume around earnings announcements O Kim, RE Verrecchia JAE Information quality and the valuation of new issues S Titman, B Trueman JAE Firm characteristics and analyst following R Bhushan JAE The rewards to meeting or beating earnings expectations E Bartov, D Givoly, C Hayn JAE Executive incentives and the horizon problem PM Dechow, RG Sloan JAE Board composition, ownership structure and hostile takeovers A Shivdasani JAE Analysts forecasts as earnings expectations PC O Brien JAE Changes in the value-relevance of earnings and book values over the past forty years DW Collins, EL Maydew, IS Weiss JAE Managerial ownership, accounting choices and informatives of earnings TD Warfield, JJ Wild, KL Wild JAE CEO stock option awards and the timing of corporate voluntary disclosures D Aboody, R Kasznik JAE Value-relevance of nonfinancial information E Amir, B Lev JAE Accounting valuation, market expectation and cross-sectional stock returns R Frankel, CMC Lee JAE The pricing of discretionary accruals KR Subramanyam JAE Empirical research on accounting choice TD Fields, TZ Lys, L Vincent JAE Accounting earnings and top executive compensation RG Sloan JAE Auditor independence, low balling and disclosure regulation L De Angelo JAE Corporate ownership structure and the informativeness of accounting earnings in East Asia JPH Fan, TJ Wong JAE Debt covenant violations and managers accounting responses AP Sweeney JAE Assessing empirical research in managerial accounting CD Ittner, DF Larcker JAE The relation between earnings and cash flows PM Dechow, SP Kothari, RL Watts JAE The changing time-series properties of earnings, cash flows and accruals D Givoly, C Hayn JAE Contracting theory and accounting RA Lambert JAE Annual bonus schemes and the manipulation of earnings RW Holthausen, DF Larcker, RG Sloan JAE Analyst forecast accuracy MB Clement JAE Financial analysts forecasts of earnings D Fried, D Givoly JAE Earnings disclosures and stockholder lawsuits DJ Skinner JAE Cross-sectional variation in the stock market response to accounting earnings PD Easton, ME Zmijewski announcements JAE Financial statement analysis and the predictions of stock returns JA Ou, SH Penman JAE Financial performance surrounding CEO turnover KJ Murphy, JL Zimmerman C 2016 CPA Australia Australian Accounting Review 79

10 J.M. Merigó & J.-B. Yang Table 4 Continued J R TC Title Author/s Year C/Y JAE The economic consequences of accounting choice RW Holthausen, RW Leftwich JAE The information content of security prices WH Beaver, RA Lambert JAE Determinants of market reactions to restatement announcements ZV Palmrose, VJ Richardson, S Scholz JAE An empirical assessment of the residual income valuation model PM Dechow, AP Hutton, RG Sloan JAE Relative valuation roles of equity book value and net incomes as a function of financial health JAE The relevance of the value relevance literature for financial accounting standard setting ME Barth, WH Beaver, WR Landsman ME Barth, WH Beaver, WR Landsman JAE On cross sectional analysis in accounting research AA Christie JAE Board characteristics, accounting report integrity and the cost of debt RC Anderson, SA Mansi, DM Reeb JAE Earnings management through real activities manipulation S Roychowdhury JAE Stock based incentive compensation and investment behavior JM Bizjak, JA Brickley, JL Coles JAE Employee stock option exercises S Huddart, M Lang JAE The association between accounting earnings and security returns for large and small firms RN Freeman JAE The association between performance plan adoption and corporate capital DF Larcker investment JAE Security analyst superiority relative to univariate time series models in LD Brown, RL Hager-man, PA Griffin, forecasting quarterly earnings et al. JAE Accrual reliability, earnings persistence and stock prices SA Richardson, RG Sloan, MT Soliman, et al. JAE Firm size and the information content of prices with respect to earnings DW Collins, SP Kothari, JD Rayburn JAE Managerial competition, information costs and corporate governance L De Angelo JAE Expertise in forecasting performance of security analysts J Jacob, TZ Lys, MA Neale JAE Limited attention, information disclosure and financial reporting D Hirshleifer, SH Teoh JAE Earnings news and small traders CMC Lee JAE Merger decisions and executive stock ownership in acquiring firms W Lewellen, C Loderer, A Rosenfeld JAE Financial accounting information, organizational complexity and corporate governance systems JAE The structure and performance consequences of equity grants employees of new economy firms R Bushman, Q Chen, E Engel, et al CD Ittner, RA Lambert, DF Larcker JAE Financial disclosure policy in an entry game MN Darrough, NM Stoughton JAE Intra-industry information transfers associated with earnings releases G Foster JAE Use of R-2 in accounting research S Brown, K Lo, T Lys Australian Accounting Review C 2016 CPA Australia

11 J.M. Merigó & J.-B. Yang Accounting Research: A Bibliometric Analysis Table 4 Continued J R TC Title Author/s Year C/Y JAE Accounting choice in troubled companies H De Angelo, L De Angelo, DJ Skinner JAE Do analysts earnings forecasts incorporate information in prior stock price JS Abarbanell changes? JAE The association between revisions of financial analysts earnings forecasts and T Lys, SK Sohn security price changes JAE An income strategy approach to the positive theory of accounting standard ME Zmijewski, RL Hagerman setting/choice JAE Determinants of weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting J Doyle, W Ge, S McVay JAE Empirical evidence on the relation between stock option compensation and S Rajgopal, T Shevlin risk taking JAE Empirical tax research in accounting DA Shackelford, T Shevlin JAE Science, specific knowledge and total quality management KH Wruck, MC Jensen JAE Auditor changes and discretionary accruals ML DeFond, KR Subramanyam JAE Smoothing income in anticipation of future earnings ML DeFond, CW Park JAE Investment opportunities and the structure of executive compensation WR Baber, SN Janakiraman, SH Kang JAE The discovery and reporting of internal control deficiencies prior to SOX-mandated audits H Ashbaugh-Skaife, DW Collins, WR Kinney JAE The effects of corporate governance on firms credit ratings H Ashbaugh-Skaife, DW Collins, R LaFond JAE An analysis of the stock price reaction to sudden executive deaths WB Johnson, RP Magee, NJ Nagarajan et al JAE Golden parachutes, executive decision making and shareholder wealth RA Lambert, DF Larcker JAR Empirical evaluation of accounting income numbers R Ball, P Brown JAR Financial ratios and the probabilistic prediction of bankruptcy JA Ohlson JAR Earnings management during import relief investigations JJ Jones JAR Financial ratios as predictors of failure WH Beaver JAR Corporate forecasts of earnings per share and stock price behavior JM Patell JAR Post earnings announcement drift delayed price response or risk premium VL Bernard, JK Thomas JAR Cross sectional determinants of analyst ratings of corporate disclosures M Lang, R Lundholm JAR Methodological issues related to the estimation of financial distress prediction models ME Zmijewski JAR Why firms voluntarily disclose bad news DJ Skinner JAR The economic consequences of increased disclosure C Leuz, RE Verrecchia JAR Information content or annual earnings announcements WH Beaver JAR Are nonfinancial measures leading indicators of financial performance? CD Ittner, DF Larcker JAR The pricing of audit services DA Simunic C 2016 CPA Australia Australian Accounting Review 81

12 J.M. Merigó & J.-B. Yang Table 4 Continued J R TC Title Author/s Year C/Y JAR Errors in estimating accruals P Hribar, DW Collins JAR Predisclosure information, firm capitalization and security price behaviour RK Atiase around earnings announcements JAR Analysis of the use of accounting and market measures of performance in RA Lambert, DF Larcker executive compensation contracts JAR Toward an implied cost of capital WR Gebhardt, CMC Lee, B Swaminathan JAR Portfolio considerations in valuing executive compensation RA Lambert, DF Larcker, RE Verrecchia JAR Disclosure of non-proprietary information RA Dye JAR Shareholder litigation and corporate disclosures J Francis, D Philbrick, K Schipper JAR Sensitivity, precision and linear aggregation of signals for performance evaluation RD Banker, SM Datar JAR An empirical investigation of the relative performance evaluation of corporate R Antle, A Smith executives JAR What determines corporate transparency? RM Bushman, JD Piotroski, AJ Smith JAR Do non-audit service fees impair auditor independence? ML DeFond, K Raghu-nandan, KR Subramanyam JAR The boundaries of financial reporting and how to extend them B Lev, P Zarowin JAR Have financial statements lost their relevance? J Francis, K Schipper JAR The impact of merger related regulations on the shareholders of acquiring firms K Schipper, R Thompson JAR ADRs, analysts and accuracy MH Lang, KV Lins, DP Miller JAR Cross sectional dependence and problems in inference in market based accounting research JAR Estimating the value of employee stock option portfolios and their sensitivities to price and volatility VL Bernard J Core, W Guay JAR A re-examination of disclosure level and the expected cost of equity capital CA Botosan, MA Plumlee JAR Self-selection and analyst coverage M McNichols, PC O Brien JAR Fundamental information analysis B Lev, SR Thiagarajan JAR Trading volume and price reactions to public announcements O Kim, RE Verrecchia JAR Market rewards associated with patterns of increasing earnings ME Barth, JA Elliott, MW Finn JAR Earnings as an explanatory variable for returns PD Easton, TS Harris JAR International differences in the cost of equity capital L Hail, C Leuz JAR A temporal analysis of earnings surprises LD Brown Australian Accounting Review C 2016 CPA Australia